Online Impersonation and Identity Theft

Lately, I have gotten many emails and phone calls about online impersonations. Everything from MySpace, Twitter and Facebook accounts to email addresses and craigslist postings. This is also sometimes called profile jacking or twitterjacking. Enough real information is being used that someone searching by things like name, address, phone number or username might mistake the impostor for the real deal. People who regularly “google” themselves may be surprised to find new pages and emails associated to their details. Sometimes this impersonation can flood you with phone calls and junk mail, or at worst turn into a kind of cyberstalking.

While annoying and occasionally frightening, online impersonation is not identity theft unless personal information not otherwise available to the public is used. Since you are not required to provide a social security number, date of birth, or other private information for verification for email addresses or online profiles, opening up an account using another person’s name is incredibly easy- but not identity theft.  While many of the activities may fall under stalking laws in your state, many times these are activities outside the law’s ability to change with new technology.

However, all is not lost! Almost all internet companies have a Terms of Service (TOS) agreement, and most of them include online impersonation for the purpose of harassment or fraud as a violation of the agreement. You can contact their abuse desk, usually found at abuse@domain.com, and point out the abuse of their TOS by the impostor. This is particularly useful if the impostor is spamming people with messages, as you can also email spam@domain.com to report it at the same time. They may or may not choose to shut down the impostor. Remember that parody and fair use rules typically apply to most companies, especially in social networking- so you may not always get a result. Additionally, a good rule of thumb is that you will get better service and swifter action on violations of TOS from services you pay for. Free email accounts and free profiles, blogs and networking typically deliver slower results, if they choose to take action at all.

If there is use of your company’s logo or other copyrighted material, you can send them a DMCA take-down notice to their registered agent. The use of copyrighted material or violations of Terms of Service are often the only leverage that a person can use to get an impostor shut down.

The ease and convenience of the internet will always struggle for balance with privacy, security and individual rights. Not only should we be aware of people potentially impersonating us, but we should be aware of how easy it can be to be fooled into believing an impostor. Often impostors will take real blog posts and real tweets to add to their own profiles to try to confuse search engines and potential followers or friends. Some become followers or friends of the real person, just to gain access to more information to imitate. The internet can be a wonderful sandbox, just be careful of the person standing behind you with a shovel.